


body talk

by loveleee



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Body Swap, F/F, F/M, Mockingay, canon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 23:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5024212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleee/pseuds/loveleee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss’ stomach flops; the mission must be over. “They’re back?”</p><p>“Well – yeah,” Haymitch says. He rubs a hand over his face. “Well, you’ll see.”</p><p>(Peeta and Johanna come back from the Capitol. They’re a little…different.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	body talk

Haymitch finds Katniss and Finnick in an empty classroom, at an uncharacteristic loss for words. His face has lost its usual sallow sheen, a flush high on his cheeks.

Katniss’ stomach flops; the mission must be over.

“They’re…”

“They’re what?” Katniss demands, sliding off of the desktop to stand. “They’re back?”

“Well – yeah,” Haymitch says. He rubs a hand over his face. “Well, you’ll see.”

 

 

 

Her pulse quickens at the sight of him.

He’s seated upright on the edge of a cot, doctors clustered around him. Though streaks of dirt mar his face, he looks otherwise unharmed. Johanna Mason is in the room, too, watching her through the glass.

Katniss crashes into the room and Peeta whips his head around, his eyes growing wide as she flies towards him, arms outstretched. She hears a high, feminine voice say _Katniss_ but she doesn’t care, there is only Peeta and the warmth of him, his arms folding back around her, his breath against her hair, his hands sliding down to cup her ass –

Katniss jumps and tenses as his fingers squeeze into her flesh. Peeta’s shoulders shake slightly – _oh, he’s crying_ , she thinks for one wild moment, and her heart clenches.

Then she hears him laugh.

“Wow, nice greeting,” Peeta says. “I think I finally get how this thing works.” He bumps his hips against her suggestively.

Cold sweeps through her. Katniss pulls away, trying to hide the way her face crumbles beneath a curtain of hair. What’s wrong with him? This isn’t her Peeta.

Peeta’s eyes soften, but there’s still a sharpness in them that’s out of place. “Katniss –“

“ _Katniss_.” There’s the feminine voice again – Johanna – though she’s never heard Johanna sound so anxious before.

Katniss turns to see her. And when they meet eyes, she _knows._

 

 

 

It’s called a cognitive exchange, Beetee says. “In layman’s terms, a brain swap. We’ve been trying to develop this in Three for years.” Katniss scowls. He sounds more impressed than concerned.

“So can you fix it?”

Beetee hesitates. Never a good sign. “We’re working on it,” he says.

“Take your time,” Johanna-as-Peeta says, scratching casually at his – _her_ , Katniss corrects herself – crotch. “I’ve got a lot of things I’ve gotta try out in this body.”

“No you don’t,” Peeta says, the slight panic elevating his voice even higher than Johanna’s usual girlish lilt. “You’re not trying _anything_ out in my body.”

“Oh, come _on,_ Peeta. Live a little.” She waves Peeta’s large hand up and down her own slim, compact body. “You have permission to do whatever you want in mine.”

“I don’t want to do anything in your body,” Peeta says stubbornly. “I just want to be back in _my_ body.”

“That’s what we _all_ want,” Katniss snaps, giving them all a warning glare. “Beetee…”

“I’m on it,” he says, avoiding her gaze.

 

 

 

Coin and Plutarch decide: They’ll keep the news of the swap a secret.

Katniss disagrees. Vehemently.

“What do you mean it’ll cause ‘mass panic’?” she demands. “It’s not like the Capitol can wave their magic wand over District Thirteen and switch all our brains with earthworms.”

“How do you know that?” Plutarch points out. “We didn’t think they were capable of this in the first place. Never underestimate your enemy, Katniss.”

She gapes at him in response. Peeta lays a comforting hand on her waist, then removes it quickly – he still hasn’t worked out what he is and is not allowed to do in the form of Johanna.

“I think what Katniss is trying to say is,” he begins, ever the diplomat, “is that the whole star-crossed lovers thing is going to be…difficult…to pull off with Johanna as the other half.”

“Oh. Is that all?” Plutarch flashes Katniss a warm smile. “I have utmost faith in you, my dear. That’s nothing a little dramatic music and top-notch video editing can’t fix.”

Peeta forces his face into a smile before he remembers how scary Johanna looks when she’s fake-happy. “Okay. But, Plutarch, I think the point she was trying to make is that –“

“Oh, goodness, look at the time,” Plutarch sighs, waving his mockingjay watch in the air dramatically. “I’m late for another strategy meeting. You two enjoy your evening.”

Katniss sighs, slumping down in her chair as soon as Plutarch is out the door. “I can’t believe this,” she mutters darkly. “I can’t _do_ this without you.”

Peeta reaches hesitantly for her hand. “You don’t have to.” But when his small, soft fingers reach her own, she pulls away. “Katniss –“

“I can’t, Peeta,” she says, springing up from her seat. “I just – I’m sorry. I can’t.”

 

 

 

There is some debate over where Peeta and Johanna should be housed. On the one hand: hardly anyone knows about the cognitive exchange. On the other: no one’s sure if Johanna Mason can be trusted in a shower room full of naked men.

Eventually Haymitch rolls his eyes and slams down his glass and says that there are dozens of empty rooms in District Thirteen, anyway, so why don’t they just give them their own goddamn apartments?

That suits them both just fine, so once they’re each cleared as mentally and physically sound, they’re released from the medical ward and assigned to individual compartments. Peeta invites Katniss over after dinner the first night. They sit side by side on the sofa, identical to the one in the compartment Katniss shares with her mother and sister, and Peeta stares at his feet, which are much smaller than the ones he’s used to.

“So, having boobs is pretty weird,” he says, breaking a silence that seems like it will never end.

Katniss’ eyes flash dangerously and he knows in an instant that it was the exact wrong way to start a conversation. He used to know these things, innately; now he’s permanently tongue-tied, his words twisting up and tripping on their way out. It’s the hormones, or something.

“Now you can stare at them all you want,” she sneers.

Peeta smiles – because it means she remembers that day in the elevator, and the way the soft light of the flames from their costumes had flickered over Johanna’s pale, rounded breasts. Because it means that she was jealous. “I don’t, though,” he says. “I mean, there’s only one pair I _want_ to look at.”

He can tell the precise moment that Katniss grasps his meaning, and he tries to hide his smirk as her face burns scarlet. It’s bolder than anything the old Peeta would have said. Maybe this body is rubbing off on him.

“I’m still not entirely sure you’re not just playing some giant trick on me,” she mutters.

“Katniss,” Peeta sighs. “I spent every single second we were apart wishing I was with you. Do you really think I’d come back and intentionally do anything that meant I _couldn’t_ touch you?”

Katniss shifts in her seat, staring down at her hands. “I missed you. I missed you so much,” she bursts out, voice trembling. “I still – I just can’t look at you like this and not feel like it’s Johanna. I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Peeta runs a hand through his short brown hair in frustration; Johanna’s head was shaved early on in their captivity, so at least that’s one thing that isn’t too far off from his real body. “When we first got here, and you came running into the room, I wondered why you weren’t running towards _me_.”

That draws a smile from her. “Really?”

“Yeah. Pretty dumb, huh.”

“No, not dumb.” Katniss is quiet for a moment. “I thought you’d kiss me.”

His pulse picks up, but it’s an odd feeling; Johanna’s heart is lighter and quicker than his own, and it flutters like a bird’s in his chest.

“I would have,” he says.

“Johanna grabbed my ass,” she whispers.

Peeta smiles, and before he can actually think about what he’s doing, he’s leaning in to kiss her.

But Katniss only realizes what’s happening in the split second before their lips brush together, and she pulls back, scrambling to her feet.

“I have to go – my mom and Prim – it’s getting so late –”

He lets her go, knowing that whatever he said would still sound wrong; would still come out in Johanna’s voice instead of his own.

 

 

 

A week passes. Johanna approaches him after dinner one night. She wants to look at her body from an outsider’s perspective – naked.

He blushes, and Johanna snorts. “So modest, Peeta. Don’t be – I’ve seen everything there is to see on _your_ body already.”

So he agrees, and they find an empty classroom in one of the many long, deserted corridors that make up District 13. Peeta tugs off his standard-issue long-sleeve shirt and steps out of his standard-issue pants and stands in place, shivering slightly, as Johanna paces around him in slow circles, eyeing herself. His nipples grow stiff in the cold and his hands twitch at his sides, longing to cover himself.

“You let me get fat,” Johanna says, sharp and accusing.

“What?”

Johanna laughs, throwing Peeta’s real head back in a way that’s so _Johanna_ he can’t believe no one in Thirteen has figured it out yet. “I’m kidding. I could use some more meat on my bones. You need to steal more food at dinner.” At his look, she rolls her eyes. “ _Kidding_.”

Peeta frowns and plucks his shirt up off the ground, more than ready to cover up. “Hang on.” Johanna steps closer and cups his breasts in her large, warm hands, giving them a quick squeeze. “Okay. I just wanted to try that. You can get dressed now.”

He pulls his clothes back on, his cheeks flaming. He hadn’t realized how sensitive a girl’s breasts were; how the touch of someone else’s hands on them would send a jolt of pleasure through him, right to his core.

He wonders if that’s how Katniss would feel, if she ever let him touch her that way.

 

 

 

Gale is unusually restless during the hour he spends hunting with Katniss that week. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Johanna lately,” he says, not without a hint of accusation.

He doesn’t know about the cognitive exchange. Katniss had thought about telling him dozens of times, but officially she’d been forbidden.

More importantly, she worried he’d see it as an opportunity.

She lets loose her arrow, frowning when it misses the wild turkey in the distance. “So?”

He shrugs, his eyes scanning the horizon for more game. “I just thought you didn’t like her very much. Based on what I saw from the Games.”

Katniss shrugs. “She’s…different than she was.”

They’re quiet for a long moment, focusing in on a deer that’s appeared a few dozen yards to the north. He takes it down with a single arrow; she thinks he’s dropped the conversation. But as they walk through the long grass to retrieve the kill, he says, “Is Peeta different, too?”

Her heart stops for just a second; does he know? Could he possibly know? “What do you mean?” she says, sure he’ll hear the quiver in her voice.

“I thought you’d be more…I don’t know,” he says. “Not that I’m complaining.”

 _Maybe we would,_ she thinks. _But we didn’t get the chance to find out._

 

 

 

Plutarch makes them film a propo. It’s a disaster.

Peeta appears fidgety and bored, nothing like the calm, steady presence they all remember from the Victory Tour. Katniss is tense and sullen, pulling away from his touch when the camera’s light blinks from green to red.

Mid-shoot, Cressida tears off her earpiece in frustration. “This isn’t working,” she announces. “Let’s try some one-on-ones.”

Coin is displeased. She stares Katniss down in the command room, her short, rounded fingernails tapping endlessly against the metal tabletop. “We did what you asked. We brought him back for you,” she says. “Now it’s time you held up your end of the bargain.”

 _You didn’t_ , she wants to scream, _he’s all wrong._ But it isn’t true, not really, and Coin is right. Her Peeta is here in District 13, living and breathing and _safe._ Locked away in another body, true – but he loves her still; she can see it in the way his soft brown eyes watch her from across the room, feel it in the fleeting, hesitant moments when he forgets himself and lets his fingers skim across the curve of her waist. Peeta is here, even if his body no longer belongs to him.

“I’m trying,” Katniss says.

Coin doesn’t even blink. “Try harder.”

 

 

Johanna sits close at lunch, her thigh pressing up against Katniss’, warm through the stiff fabric of their pants. She leans in close to whisper in her ear, so close Katniss can feel her blond stubble against her cheek. Across the table, Gale frowns, and Peeta keeps his dark lashes low, eyes focused on his stew.

“You need to cut him a break,” Johanna says, lending Peeta’s voice a low growl that Katniss has never heard before. “He’s jumping out of my skin.”

Katniss tilts her head slightly, afraid that if she turns it too far, Johanna will move in for a kiss. “What are you talking about?”

“I know what I look like when I need to get laid, Brainless.” Johanna shrugs. “Every girl should experiment a little.”

 

 

 

That night in her room, Katniss unwraps the little pearl from its parachute, rolling it between her fingers before she presses it against her lips.

She thinks of the first arena, of Peeta’s naked body as she’d bathed him in the stream, his chest hair light and golden in the sunlight. He had been skinny then, weak and hot with fever. Nothing like the way he was in the second arena: sturdy, muscled, his bare skin slightly pink after hours in the bright sun. She closes her eyes and thinks of how different those kisses had felt, and that one kiss in particular, when she’d let her hands roam and grasp at him, bringing him closer, but not close enough.

A body is a body, she reasons. Bodies change. But Peeta is Peeta: sweet, loyal, giving, brave Peeta.

Would it really be so different?

 

 

 

Peeta’s embarrassed by the noise he makes when a pair of small hands push him into the utility closet. He’s never squealed in his life; but then, he’s been experiencing a lot of firsts lately.

He’s surprised when he turns and sees that it’s Katniss, shutting the door carefully behind them.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” she replies, sounding breathless.

“What’s up?”

Katniss doesn’t answer. She kisses him.

And he kisses back.

 

 

 

By the time they surface, they’ve missed their scheduled dinner hour.

“I’m sorry,” Peeta apologizes, knowing how Katniss feels about meals and wasted food.

But the look Katniss gives him – heavy-lidded eyes, mussed hair, red, red lips – sends a rush of heat blossoming between his legs. His hand automatically moves to adjust the fabric at the front of his crotch, before he realizes that he’s got nothing to hide.

“It’s okay,” Katniss says. “I’m not really hungry.”

“Me neither,” he lies, hoping Johanna’s stomach doesn’t growl as loudly as his does when it’s completely empty.

“It’s curfew soon,” Katniss says, tugging at her thick black braid.

“Yeah.”

It takes him a second to get it.

“Oh. Oh.” Peeta runs a hand through his short, spiky brown hair, even more intensely aware of the body he’s in. “Yeah, we can – my room’s not that far.”

“Okay.” They both pause, too hesitant to make the first move.

Peeta takes her hand, squeezes it, threads their fingers together the way he did that night on the beach. Back when her hands felt so small, so delicate, when they were wrapped up in his own.

He smiles. “Well.” Breathes in deep. “Let’s go.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for this silliness. Hope you enjoy! :)


End file.
